Have you ever opened a bottle of soda too quickly after it was agitated only to have it explode all over you and your belongings? While the chore to clean up the sticky sugary mess is a mere annoyance, as divers we need to realize the fizzy bottle of soda represents our bodies as we ascend from a dive.
When diving, we consume compressed air while our bodies are under greater pressure than at the surface. Inert gases from the air we breathe is forced into body tissues, muscles, and blood. During a normal ascent, our bodies experience a reduction in pressure and these inert gases come out of the body tissues and are exhaled safely. During a rapid ascent, these gases are released at a rate that we can’t keep up with through simple exhalation and bubbles begin to form, leading to decompression sickness. Similar to a bottle of soda, if agitated and opened quickly, the soda spills, but if opened slowly, the soda does not spill.
Safety Stop Needed
Most instructors and many dive computers these days recommend a safety stop on every dive. Five meters/15 feet for 3 minutes is the general rule for no-decompression diving. Since it’s better safe than sorry and the stop is shallow and short, it is wise to make this stop on every dive regardless of dive profile. To continue the soda bottle analogy, think of how you can begin to unscrew the cap on a bottle, have the fizz rise, then close the cap and wait for the bubbles to disappear. The safety stop allows the micro-bubbles to safely come out of your body tissues with each exhalation.
Some people take the “stop” part of safety stop very literally and think they need to remain completely motionless. While it’s recommended to avoid excess physical exertion, you can still move around while completing your safety stop as long as you remain at the correct depth. This means you can continue to look around on a coral head or even take pictures while you wait for the clock to count down.
Additional Education
It appears as though at the recreational diving level, the knowledge behind why safety stops are necessary has become less relevant in favor of remembering rules or following a dive computer. Luckily, this information is based on years of research and as long as the basic concept behind safety stops is understood, recreational divers can easily manage their risks of decompression sickness. However, if you plan on doing decompression diving with multiple safety stops at various depths, you should ensure you have the necessary training to participate in such activities. Do not simply rely on your dive computer.
Photoss via Eric Kilby, Wikipedia
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